


An Acquired Taste

by Bakageta



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Big Bang Challenge, Gen, Implied/referenced food scarcity, Implied/referenced resource scarcity, Other, Venom Big Bang 2020, food discussion, taste testing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:07:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29050395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: “Mrs. Chen looks out for us.”Venom said seriously.“Good, I’d like to as well,” Dan admitted. “Would you be interested in figuring out what it is that you like in food?”What do you think?Eddie asked as Venom wrapped more closely around his shoulders.----Eddie answers questions, Venom expands their culinary horizons, and Dan becomes an armchair nutritionist.
Relationships: Eddie Brock & Venom Symbiote, Eddie Brock/Venom Symbiote
Comments: 20
Kudos: 190
Collections: Venom Big Bang 2020





	An Acquired Taste

**Author's Note:**

> All art was done by the wonderful [OldToadWoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToad_art), I had a great time working with you!
> 
> A huge thanks to [sajastar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sajastar) for betaing!
> 
> And, finally, thanks to [cupidsbow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupidsbow) for running this big bang!

“So the switch is a good thing, overall, really,” Dan explained, pausing to take a drink from the crappy microbrew IPA he’d brought with him to Eddie’s new apartment. As the guest, Dan was relaxing in Eddie’s new recliner while Eddie sat on his old couch, one foot on the floor and the other stretched out over the cushions.

“Why were you having such issues getting the hospital to change surgical gloves then?” Eddie prompted and took as small a sip as he could from the chocolate stout that Dan had given him. The beer was overly sour and bitter tasting to Eddie’s symbiote adjusted palate. He could feel Venom’s irritation in the back of his throat.

 _ **Disgusting,**_ they grumbled directly into Eddie’s brain before re-focusing on the nearly muted television drama they were watching instead of interacting with Dan.

“The senior surgeons have been fighting it tooth and nail. And it’s the same argument they use against any change they don’t like: we’ve always done it this way,” Dan gestured at the living room in general with the bottle. “Latex isn’t the be all, end all anymore, there are materials that are just as good and that don’t cause allergic reactions.”

“It’s like that everywhere, change is hard when things are good enough,” Eddie acknowledged. “But you did it, congrats.”

“Yeah, cheers!” Dan leaned over to clink the neck of his beer against Eddie’s and took a long drink. Eddie, in turn, took another tiny sip and set his beer on the coffee table in front of him.

“And speaking of change,” Dan switched focus, “how’s the whole symbiosis thing been going for you guys?”

“It’s been—it’s been pretty good, actually.” That was a huge understatement, but pretty good was technically correct.

“That’s great, I’m happy you’re getting along.” Dan trailed off, swirling what was left of his beer as slight furrows appeared on his brow.

This was the third time they’d done the whole boy’s night thing at Annie’s suggestion—the first time they’d done it at Eddie’s place instead of Annie’s—after Eddie had admitted Venom’s survival a few months ago. It’d honestly gone better than Eddie had expected. Annie’s not at all secret plot of getting her ex, her ex’s symbiote, and her current boyfriend to be friends was going off swimmingly except for the fact that Venom had been mentally checked out every time.

_Dan’s a nice guy if you get to know him._

_**You do not know that, Eddie.** _

_I do though; I’m the one who’s gotten to know him._

Venom tried to be carefully neutral regarding Dan. They knew that Eddie wanted to be friends with Dan, even if they didn’t understand why, but Eddie could feel their tension every time he interacted with the other man. Eddie could tell that the first MRI tearing jagged strips from them, the argument between Venom and Annie and Dan in the MRI room, and the feeling of Dan’s throat beneath their clawed fingers were always in the back of Venom's mind around Dan. They were braced for retaliation, and did their best to hide that from their host.

“You can just ask,” Eddie interrupted the awkward silence outside of his head, “the worst that’ll happen is we won’t answer.”

“Ahh, if you’re sure?” Dan’s tension smoothed with interest and Eddie was surprised that he hadn’t leaned forward and out of the recliner.

“Yeah, go ahead, it’ll be fine.” Eddie reassured.

_**Are you sure?** _

_Yeah, I’m sure._

And Eddie actually was. When he wasn’t running off of self-righteous anger, ego, and spite, he was a pretty good judge of how people would react to things. Right now, Dan had the look of someone with at least two dozen questions, who’d been holding back out of a sense of propriety, and who had just been told that the mores of polite, normal conversation had been lifted. There was probably very little that could put him off right now.

Venom rested uneasily just under the skin of Eddie’s back despite his reassurances.

"Okay, then, what's it like having someone else in your head?"

"It's interesting," Eddie had assumed that Dan would ask about something more physical, but maybe that made sense. The other man was a neurosurgeon, after all. "It’s like… You know how most people have a kind of running monologue in their head, right? Like ‘gotta go to the store, get groceries, oooh a sale, get home, fuck forgot the the milk’?”

“Yeah?”

“For us it’s more of a dialogue. Like we’re always communicating, even if it’s just feelings.”

“Huh,” Dan stalled and sipped at his shitty IPA, “isn’t that… a lot? A lot to handle?”

Venom bristled against Eddie’s shoulder blades at the suggestion they might be too much but remained tense and silent under their host's skin.

“It was at first, especially the first time we bonded.” Venom shifted upwards, stiff and defensive underneath Eddie’s neck and shoulders. “But... we grew into ourselves. Being together hasn’t been too much for a while now.”

“Being together? That seems kind of…” Dan trailed off.

“Intimate?” Eddie supplied.

“...Yeah, s’one way to put it.”

“Kinda the only way to put it, I think.” And Eddie grinned because he knew exactly what he was going to say next and it was going to be great. He felt Venom noting his anticipation, their defensiveness minutely relaxed as they eased back down the inside of Eddie’s shoulders.

“I mean, we’re literally always inside each other,” Eddie said and finished the sentence off with a wink. That was enough to send Dan over the edge and into the most perfect spit take Eddie had ever had the privilege of seeing.

 _ **Why did he do that? You aren’t wrong.**_ Venom asked, caught off guard and confused by Dan’s reaction to one of the facts of their existence.

 _Unexpected humor._ Eddie’s answer settled Venom and they spread more evenly through his shoulders. They didn’t quite return to their previous tension and gave up on pretending to pay attention to the TV.

“You,” Dan pronounced after he’d recovered enough to talk, “are a menace.” He finished off his beer and opened one of the bottles of water that he’d set out on the coffee table when he’d first sat down. “Hydration is important,” he explained, “especially if you happen to be on call tomorrow morning. You want one? Since it seems like you’re not really into the stout.”

Said stout was currently sitting on the coffee table still over two thirds full and rapidly approaching room temperature.

“That’d be good, yeah.” Venom caught the bottle Dan tossed to Eddie in a tendril that hadn’t existed a moment ago and passed it to their host warily.

_Show off._

_**I do not know what you are talking about, Eddie.** _

_Yes you do, you smug little shit._ Eddie thought with clear affection.

“What’s up with that, if you don’t mind me asking? Anne gave me the impression that you’re kind of a beer snob?”

“Oh my God, I was never that bad,” Eddie attempted to defend himself.

“She said you would drag her to every beer fest you could find.”

“That doesn’t make me a snob, plenty of people go to those things.”

“You have a literal collection of shirts from local breweries.”

“I like the designs!”

 _ **Eddie, you used to pick restaurants based on their beer menu,**_ Venom pointed out in his head.

“Traitor!” Eddie gasped dramatically. “Since you’re both ganging up on me,” he added, when he saw Dan’s confused expression, “I guess, that in the past, I might have been a beer snob.”

There was a beat of silence before Dan broke out laughing again and Eddie started laughing because Dan was laughing. Venom was too thrown for the staccato vibration that Eddie had noticed was how they laughed but, after a moment, they did relax against Eddie’s lungs and bathed in the fizz of happy neurotransmitters loose in his bloodstream.

Eventually they all wound down and there were a few moments of comfortable quiet before Dan picked up the conversation again.

“If you don’t mind me asking… it’s not just the stout that you don’t like anymore, is it?”

“S’fine, I don’t mind.” Eddie waved off Dan’s concern. “I quit drinking ‘cause Venom can’t stand the taste of alcohol. We’re still trying to figure out food, to be honest.”

“Well dang, I got you guys a chocolate stout because I thought there would be something for both of you…”

 _ **He thought I would like that?**_ Venom stilled, and Eddie could feel them caught between surprise and mild offense.

“And it was a beautiful thought that we both appreciate,” Eddie didn’t have the heart to tell Dan that the chocolate stout he’d brought them was one of those ‘chocolate’ flavored beers that didn’t actually have any chocolate in it.

“But wait, could they just... not taste things? Is that a thing they can do? Cause I think that would make sense but who am I to judge the capabilities of--”

“Dan,” Eddie interrupted, “stop, breathe.”

Dan did. “Sorry—it’s just—when I was in med school I was looking into a physician-researcher program, but I managed to match neurosurgery. That’s not an opportunity that you turn down.”

_And that’s why you’re not gonna be able to ignore him._

Venom nudged Eddie’s memory of Dr. Skirth from the bodega to the front of their mind. _**Dan would be like her? Not like**_ —a horrible flash from Venom’s memory of dozens of faces and cold-glass-burning-wrong-staring-watching-always-watching.

_I don’t think he’d ever be like that, Venom, Dan’s a good guy. He had to be to help us out after we got him banned from that restaurant._

_**You got them banned; the fishtank was your idea.** _

_The lobster was yours; you’re not gonna win this one._

_**Rude,**_ they grumbled, but Eddie felt their tension ease.

Eddie couldn’t help making a huff of laughter at that. “Sorry, they keep trying to blame you getting banned from that restaurant on me.”

“That actually wasn’t a huge loss, the steak was kinda chewy.” Dan admitted, like dissing a three star Michelin restaurant was a normal thing that normal people did.

 **“And it was dead.”** Venom added using Eddie’s mouth.

“To be fair, most food humans eat is dead,” Dan replied, wide-eyed.

“Dan, no, don’t say most. Venom’s gonna have me swallowing goldfish—”

 **“What do you mean _most_ food?” **Venom interrupted.

 _Rude_ , Eddie groused. _Use your own mouth_.

_**Fine.** _

“It’s mainly insects and arthropods that people eat live, and the US tends to look down on that kind of thing.” Dan explained. Eddie was infinitely glad he’d had the foresight to ban Venom from eating bugs with _his_ mouth during their first month together.

 **“What about the goldfish?”** They said from a mouth they’d formed over Eddie’s shoulder.

Shit, of course they picked up on that.

“It was a fad back in the… late 1930’s, early 40’s maybe?” Eddie dredged up from memory. “A bunch of college kids started it up as a stunt during their student council elections and then it became a competition between colleges.”

**“If it is a competition, we would win.”**

“I’m sure we would, dear,” and Eddie was going to ignore the way Dan’s eyebrow ticked up at that, “but Dan was asking us about how we taste things.”

 **“Oh,”** they said, **“right.”**

It was interesting feeling Venom’s hesitant anticipation of the terrible joke they were about to make.

“So,” Dan started after a beat of silence long enough to show he knew he was being set up, “how do you taste things?”

 **“With our tongue.”** Venom said and dangled their tongue out of Eddie’s shoulder and down his arm.

Both humans couldn’t help but laugh, if not from the joke then from the sight of a three foot long tongue dangling out of Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie pushed a wave of fond affection toward Venom and they basked in the positive response they’d received.

“Oh my god,” Dan groaned as he dragged his hands down his face, “Your shitty jokes are contagious.”

 **“Oh no. Eddie. You have ruined us. We will never be funny. What a loss,”** Venom was completely deadpan and radiated pleased smugness as both humans broke out laughing again.

“Okay, but seriously,” Eddie continued after he managed to catch his breath, “it’s like, we both taste whatever I’m eating. Venom just… interprets information differently and it’s hard to enjoy something when part of you finds it disgusting.”

“Huh, so do they have to share your senses or can they… can they just not?”

“Ah, lemme ask…”

“You don’t know--” Dan started before Eddie cut him off with a shake of his head.

Eddie actually did know, but it kind of wasn’t his weirdness to share. Or, at least, it was _mostly_ not his weirdness to share.

_Is this something you’re okay with Dan knowing?_

_**Yes?**_ Their tone was slightly confused and Eddie realized that Dan’s positive response to them and his genuine interest had completely gotten past Venom’s guard. _**We were answering questions?**_

_Yeah, but that was about us. This time it’s about you and I dunno how much you want to share with Dan._

Warm appreciation coated the back of Eddie’s mind before Venom responded, _**I do not… distrust… Dan, and you trust him. I will tell him, so you do not have to keep asking.**_ They pushed the mouth on Eddie’s shoulder out into a head, smaller but more solid and finished than the one they’d first used to talk to Eddie on the buoy. They wound behind Eddie and rested their chin on his other shoulder.

 **“I do not have to share senses,”** Venom said, opening their eyes as they formed. **“But, I also have my own. If I did not taste the beer on Eddie’s tongue I would still taste it in his blood.”**

“Huh.” Dan was staring, and Eddie realized that he had never gotten to see Venom outside of Eddie like they were now. “Is it like that with everything?”

**“Yes, if I am not engaged with his sensory cortex, Eddie’s flesh will muffle all my senses.”**

“That makes sense, I guess. Do you like any human foods?” Dan asked, “I don’t think Eddie would fill his freezer with tater tots if you didn’t like them.”

 **“Of course, but Eddie kept bags of tater tots before us.”** Venom revealed before Eddie pinched at the substance behind their jaw.

“Dan really doesn’t need to know how shitty I eat!”

 **“Rude! Eddie!”** They snapped at Eddie’s fingers, but their teeth only grazed his fingertips. Eddie didn’t bother pulling his hand away, both of them perfectly aware of the other’s positioning and intent.

“Eddie’s poor diet aside,” Dan said, and Eddie took a moment to feign offense, “what do you like to eat, Venom?”

 **“Chocolate, potatoes, sushi, the meats Eddie gets from the specialty butcher… eggs...”** they trailed off.

“Soy sauce,” Eddie added, “They can’t get enough fuckin’ soy sauce, would make me drink it if I didn’t have standards.” Admittedly they weren’t very high standards, but that was another thing Dan didn’t need to know.

**“Yes, soy sauce is very good.”**

“Huh… That’s--I’m sure there’s some common thread there but I can’t for the life of me figure out what.” Dan leaned back in the recliner. “Venom, is there something in those foods or do you just like the taste?”

“Shit, I better not be eating raw beef liver for the taste.” Eddie groaned.

 **“No, not just for taste. There are calories, protein, and other nourishing things in those foods.”** Venom was silent for a moment, and Eddie could feel the quiet buzz of their thoughts. **“They are similar to what we get from Eddie, but they only help us because Eddie processes them for us.”**

“Eddie, what do they mean when they say what they get from _you_?” Dan looked worried and Venom gripped closer around Eddie’s neck and shoulders when he noted the other man’s concern.

“I think whatever Venom eats is a neurotransmitter or hormone or something?” Eddie shrugged, momentarily loosening Venom’s grip around his neck. “They talk a lot about how my moods taste. I haven’t noticed any huge differences, so either whatever they take isn’t enough to affect me or they’re compensating for it.”

Eddie’s hand was at the side of Venom’s head, soothing them as best he could, but they didn't relax their grip until most of the tension left Dan’s frame.

“Sorry,” Dan sighed. “It’s just… concerning? I guess?”

“Nah, I get it.” And Eddie really, really did. It was easy to jump to conclusions about things that had been issues in the past. “It’s just—I’m more concerned with how hard the lady at the bodega is gonna judge me for buying out all her chocolate and soy sauce.”

 **“Mrs. Chen looks out for us.”** Venom said seriously.

“Good, I’d like to as well,” Dan admitted. “Would you be interested in figuring out what it is that you like in food?”

It was something of an olive branch between Dan and Venom, and Eddie really wanted them to take it. They’d managed so far, between eating Venom’s favorite foods and hunting in the bay, to only need human brains every second or third week. If they could beef up Eddie’s production of whatever it was they needed or find a supplement and not need to risk themselves hunting people, even bad ones, it would take care of so much of the stress in Eddie’s life.

But like a lot of things now, it wasn’t just Eddie’s decision to make.

“Give us a sec…”

 _What do you think?_ Eddie asked as Venom wrapped more closely around his shoulders.

Both of them knew what Eddie wanted, at least in general terms, and Eddie was pretty sure he knew what Venom wanted. In their own ways, they both wanted the other to be safe, to be happy, but that meant different things for each of them.

 _ **...It would be easier to hide,**_ Venom sent, reluctantly. _**We would not need to hunt.**_

 _True._ But Eddie didn’t actually like the thought of giving up hunting entirely. People, yes, he would love to not have to spend time researching scumbags for the sole purpose of eating them. Especially because he couldn’t write articles about the sudden disappearances of a series of human traffickers and feel secure that no one would make the connection. Several acronymed agencies had investigated the remains of the LIFE Foundation and it was only by luck that they’d escaped close scrutiny.

 _We could still go up to Mendocino though, or Shasta... or_ — _fuck_ — _I bet Sequoia’d be great… And there’s always the bay._ It would be amazing to spend some time outside the city, and Eddie could imagine chasing animals through forests vividly enough that Venom could pick up on it. Eddie’d had to accept what Venom had told him months ago when they were still getting used to each other: they were a predator and so was Eddie. Hunting down information was only one and a half steps away from chasing down prey.

There was a tentative confusion and hope misting in between them, _**But we would not have to, we would be safe from**_ —a mental collage of every SWAT agent and hired goon that Drake had ever sent after them.

 _We’re never gonna be safe-safe,_ Eddie thought and earned a slight surge of indignation from the alien, _not with what I do_ — _what we do_ — _but we can reduce risk. It’s something I’ve gotta try and do now, even if I’m shit at it, cause I’m not just putting myself in danger._

_But it doesn’t mean we stop doing things we enjoy._

Eddie felt them grasp at the idea of long term stability, of stability despite taking risks, of life being stable enough to even make plans. They turned it over in their mind, twisting it and examining it. Venom pulled up Eddie’s memories of the intermittent times in his life when he’d felt safe: childhood before the car accident, New York before his disgrace, San Francisco before Drake. Eddie felt them focus in on the endings of those events, and they couldn’t stop the impressions of their own past from seeping across to Eddie. Feelings of terror, and struggle, and never-enough.

_Won’t happen. We’re not alone this time._

Warmth and trust and love bloomed in Eddie’s chest behind his sternum and around his heart.

 _ **We will not let it happen.**_ They agreed and curled all the way around Eddie’s neck and extended tendrils of themself down and entwined them through his chest wall and encircled his ribs.

“Yeah, we wanna figure this out.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate the buffet,” Eddie said looking from Annie’s living room at the array of tiny paper plates with little servings of food that coated the countertop island in the kitchen, “but—just—what? Why?”

 _ **Does it matter? Food!**_ Venom passed a familiar eye over some of the plates (various types of meat, styles of cooked potatoes, and chocolates) and their interest was drawn by others (what Eddie thought was probably tofu, a pile of green slime that might have been seaweed, and hopefully hard-boiled eggs) as they slid out from Eddie’s flank.

“Data collection!” Dan announced. “I had some ideas based on Venom’s favorite foods and what you told me about emotions having taste.”

“So were you able to figure anything out at all?” Eddie was no stranger to research and hadn’t gotten very far. Soy sauce, chocolate, meat, and potatoes weren’t much to go on, but any starting point Dan could give them would be better than nothing at all.

Only half of Eddie’s attention was on Venom as they walked his body past Dan and closer to the impromptu buffet.

“I figured out a little bit,” Dan said, pivoting to follow them as they moved. “The foods Venom likes don’t really have much in common, at least overall. I mean, obviously meat is high in protein, but none of your other foods are unless you count the soybeans that soy sauce gets made from. And it’s the same with potatoes and chocolate, both are high in carbs and not much else.”

“Okay, so nothing major in common, what about the little fiddly shit, vitamins and miner—oh God, what the hell!”

The taste of rich salt and what Eddie could only describe as green, rose up along the back of his tongue. It was sudden and strange, not exactly bad, but not exactly good either.

 **“That was good,”** Venom rumbled as they slurped up the last of the green slime and caused a second wave of salty green to roll across Eddie’s taste buds. They had stretched from Eddie and bridged the gap between him and the counter.

“That tasted like grass.” Eddie whined as he followed Venom the rest of the way to the kitchen.

Dan looked like he desperately wanted to ask how, exactly, Eddie had found out what grass tasted like, but instead he followed Eddie to the kitchen.

“That’s called spirulina, it’s a kind of seaweed.”

“Why seaweed, Dan? I thought we were trying foods, not beach debris.”

“Spirulina is a food, though?” Dan’s brow furrowed, “It’s actually very nutritionally dense; lots of protein, minerals, and B vitamins.”

 **“It also has some of the things, Eddie.”** Venom confirmed. They were already looking at the rest of the plates; the line of their teeth cracking open and drawing air into their mouth and over their tongue.

Eddie did his best not to sneeze as his brain tried to interpret the information that Venom’s combined sense of taste/smell was providing. It was one of their senses that hadn’t translated to Eddie’s mostly human brain nearly as well as others had. The result was that he felt like he was either tasting with his nose or smelling with his tongue.

“Great! We can add ocean boogers to our list. Wonderful.” Eddie tried to sound put upon, but he couldn't help smiling at Venom’s excitement over finding a new food.

“Raw meat, chocolate, tater tots, soy sauce, and ‘ocean boogers’.” Dan marked off with his fingers. “It’s an interesting list if nothing else.”

“Does the seaweed help any?”

“Not really, it’s high in protein and very nutritionally dense. I’m pretty sure whatever Venom likes in food is a precursor to the neurotransmitters they take from you, and spirulina is high in almost all of those precursor nutrients.”

 **“So we are eliminating options?”** Venom asked, they had tangled themselves around their host during Dan’s explanation.

“Narrowing it down at least. There’s a significant amount of crossover between foods high in these nutrients.”

“Does it matter which one it is then?” Eddie asked while Venom’s attention turned back towards the plates of food laid out on the countertop, “it sounds like all I actually need to do is convince Venom to try new food.”

“That’s not wrong,” Dan agreed easily. “But if we figure this out you can use it to guide food choices, and some of the neurotransmitters are also used as medicine. There’s one that you can actually get over the counter, and if I know what you guys need I can help if anything happens.”

Eddie felt a flash of irritation from Venom and they bristled at the point where they emerged from his body.

 **“Nothing will happen.”** They rumbled, annoyed. Eddie noted, though, that they weren’t angry. He could feel their distraction, surrounded as they were with food that might be enough to give them the security that they’d only just realized was within their grasp. If Dan’s food experiment worked out, Annie might have competition for her position as Venom’s second favorite.

“Still, nice to have a fallback.” Eddie countered and felt more than heard the symbiote’s answering grumble.

 **“Whatever,”** They gave up on the human’s conversation and turned to the nearest plate—the hard boiled eggs—and gulped them down fast enough that Eddie barely tasted them on the back of his tongue. **“These are good even if you’ve burnt them.”**

“Burnt?” Dan asked and furrowed his brows.

“Cooked,” Eddie clarified.

 **“Sure,”** Venom rolled Eddie’s eyes, assuming correctly that Dan would understand the reaction better on a human face.

Instead of responding verbally, Dan turned to the fridge and pulled a raw egg out. “You can kill salmonella, right?”

 **“Of course,”** Venom drifted towards Dan, their tongue slipping out of their mouth in anticipation.

Dan tossed the egg towards Venom, and they snapped it out of the air with gusto. Their jaws slammed shut around it with an echoing thwump loud enough to make even a surgeon flinch. Eddie was just glad that all of the yolk had stayed inside their mouth. Venom’s satisfaction washed over him along with a taste that was at least twice as rich as the hard-boiled egg had been.

“That’s better? Why is that better?”

“Cooking breaks apart proteins, makes them easier for humans to digest, but nutrients get broken down too.” Dan hazarded a guess.

**“Ease of digestion is irrelevant, we will take all that we can get.”**

“Of course,” this time Eddie rolled his own eyes, “but I happen to like cooking my food, and I don’t think we’re gonna run out of eggs.”

Eddie tries to impress on Venom that they would have enough. Enough money, enough food, enough time to do whatever they wanted. They could eat what tasted good instead of what was most efficient. They could have options and preferences. Venom warmed quickly to the concept, but Eddie could tell that it still didn’t quite feel real to them.

 _ **I want it to be**_ , they murmured in Eddie’s head.

“It is.” Eddie ignored Dan’s momentary confusion and picked what he thought was a soybean off of a plate. “Try this; let’s see if there’s another plant you actually like.”

They snapped the beanpod out of his hand, grazing their teeth against his fingertips.

 **“That is good, too.”** Venom’s satisfaction thrummed through both of them, and, at the tail end, the barest beginning of enough.

With enthusiasm, Venom worked their way through the rest of Dan’s spread at such speed that Eddie only had a chance to call out a “yes” or a “no” as they ate. It was an experience that Eddie was not eager to repeat. He felt overwhelmed, simultaneously tasting and smelling what felt like a grocery’s entire stock. It was worth the overly rich, mangled combination of flavors rising up from the back of his throat though. For the first time, Venom felt sated and they hadn’t needed to kill anyone to get to that point.

 _ **That was amazing, Eddie,**_ Venom sighed into his mind as they gave up maintaining a face and melted themselves over his shoulders and down his back. Satisfaction washed over them and then over Eddie like a blanket.

“Yeah, let’s just not do the whole sample platter thing again anytime soon. It’s gonna take awhile to get this taste out of my mouth.”

“Is he—are they supposed to be doing that?” Dan gestured towards Eddie’s arms where Venom was sinking into his skin and tracing smooth patterns on the backs of his hands.

“I think so?” Eddie asked more than actually said as contentment and warmth seeped through his body.

 **“We are fine.”** Venom mumbled through Eddie’s mouth, they felt sleepy and pleased.

_**That was a good idea. The best idea. Here.** _

Suddenly Venom’s satiation became Eddie’s too, in the same way they could impress their hunger into his gut. It was like they wanted to sleep and digest, but Eddie’s systems picked up the excess of their meal and interpreted the neurotransmitters the way they were meant to.

“It’s like they’re gonna fall asleep, but I just feel really, really good. Like I’m happy and content and it’s just really... nice.”

“That makes sense, the foods they like are high in phenylalanine, tryptophan, and tyrosine,” Dan listed. “They’re building blocks for a lot of neurotransmitters, mainly the feel good, positive ones like serotonin and dopamine.”

“Are any of them the over the counter thing you were talking about earlier?”

“Yeah, actually: phenylethylamine. It comes from phenylalanine and it’s sold as a mood enhancing supplement. You could probably put it on anything you wanted to eat.”

“That’s…” Eddie started before breaking into a yawn, the secondhand feeling of a huge meal catching up to him. “That’s aw’some.”

 _ **Outstanding,**_ Venom agreed, luxuriating in the byproducts of their meal. Eddie felt as they seeped evenly into his muscles, heavy with a gratefulness that they weren’t sure how to express.

“You can take a nap on the couch if you need to,” Dan offered when Eddie yawned a second time.

“Yeah, thanks. We may have eaten too much…” Eddie admitted, “I didn’t think that was actually possible.”

“There’s a first time for everything, I suppose.” Dan chuckled as he led Eddie to Annie’s familiar couch.

**Author's Note:**

> I had a great time writing for this big bang even if the reason for it (the second movie) got delayed.
> 
> Comments and kudos are very appreciated, and, please, come say hi on [tumblr](https://bakageta.tumblr.com)!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[art] for An Acquired Taste](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29568351) by [OldToad_art (OldToadWoman)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldToadWoman/pseuds/OldToad_art)




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